A Wandering Traveller’s Prayer
“It seems to me that the job of a picture maker, whether a painter or photographer, is to face facts, and if you can, to try to record a basis for affirmation, and possibly even gratitude. The artist intuits something beneath and within what appears to be frightening. How that is done and how it’s conveyed, of course, is one of the great mysteries that surrounds art.”
Robert Adams, Photographer
Introduction to American Silence: The Photographs of Robert Adams
As a picture maker, I have come to believe that whatever has happened to me is a resource – raw material that I draw on as I shape my photographic seeing. When crafting Rosa: A Story of Love and Memory, the camera held my hand as I ‘faced the facts’ and documented my beloved mother’s decline into Alzheimer’s. Now, years later, as the pandemic wanes and waxes and I face the next life-draft, my camera eases my disquiet as I wander and explore vertical panoramic imagery.
Bryn Mawr Train Station, Philadelphia, PA, 2021
My Backstory
1. Sky-Seeking: Self-Portrait as Metaphor
More than ever, during these days of uncertainty, I’m finding my core being in vertical panoramic pictures. At times these X-rays of my heart include my cast shadow; at times I am absent; essentially, these images are “self-portraits as metaphor.
Keenly perceptive Andrew Hull (My Voice My Lens, 2017) said it best re: this way of seeing ‘self’ in his Self-Portrait as Metaphor artist’s statement:
“Ironically, it seems that there’s more honesty in expressing one’s identity without the simple act of physical manifestation. In trying to consciously capture who you are without being able to just hop into the frame shouting “Me! Here I am!” you’re forced to take a more conscious look at what you are and what you aspire to be, and bring something else into being to speak for you.”
Surrey Place, Queens Park, Toronto, 2021
Rolling Hills, Gladwyne, PA, 2022
I revel in the kinesthetic physicality of the photographic process: I start by noticing light and sky - bracketed by “all things tall’; then I tilt my camera downward and begin guiding my lens skyward – in a wavy arc-like trajectory. When your camera beeps (and I’m in a arched backbend!), I know my vertical panorama is complete.
You could say that these images are “a camera’s version of palindrome”. When you turn this slender image upside-down, top frame and bottom Frame switch places! Thus, these ‘running back again’ pictures invigorate a multiplicity of readings and meanings.
Philadelphia Museum of Art Grand Hall, Philadelphia, PA, 2022
“Palindrome” means “running back again - from the Greek “palindromos”: πίσω πάλι//”back again” + αγώνας δρόμου/ “a running race”
2. The Sky as Metaphor
In retrospect, we are all, at a profoundly primal level, innate sky-seekers. From the beginning of time, humanity has been ‘lifting our eyes’ to this omnipresent, celestial space above us – in search of meaning and answers and metaphors that speak to our complex life-questions.
Palacio de Justicia, Madrid, 2009
Fortress, Cascais, Portugal, 2009
Pier Lookout, Ontario Place, Toronto, 2020
I became a bona fide wandering sky-seeker during my year of magical travel in Spain and Portugal (2008-2009), where clear skies are often radically “Azul” – a rich shade of blue. Somehow, when I would tilt my lens upwards, the Azul would deepen into a more saturated hue.
This creative experience is as exhilarating today as it was eleven years ago. I still find myself gazing upward in search of ‘Azul’, and long for a return to that intense sense of freedom and creative wellbeing. I imagine fellow artists share this deep yearning.
Living The Questions
A vertical panorama can enliven a plethora of interpretations and introspections re: “gazing upward and beyond”, “looking forward/ looking backward”, “hopefulness”, and the idea of “equivalents”.
As a photographer crafting these visual metaphors during this elusive pandemic, I am living these, among many, questions: How does this way of seeing lead me to acknowledge that life shapes me in ways I am unable to control or predict? ... and... How does the art of tracking elliptical skies - bracketed by landscapes, cityscapes, architecture - offer the promise of perpetual return, and thus keep my soul intact? ... and ... Is my itinerant sky-seeking an intuitive prayer affirming the confluence of fearfulness and wholehearted gratitude?
Thoughts most welcome!
Looking forward to living the questions together!
j
King Street, Toronto, 2021
Trillium Trail, Ontario, Place, Toronto, 2020
Inspirational Teachers I Draw On
* Ralf Steiner
Documentary Photographer, Avant-Guard Filmmaker
* Andrew Hull
Leader, Writer
My Voice My Lens, Wave Financial - Cohort 2, 2017
* Alexandra Kleeman
Author, journalist, teacher
* Jorges Luis Borges
Argentine Poet, Essayist, And Short-Story Writer
The Masks We Wear, Memorial to Firemen, Toronto, 2020
In my next blog entry, I will introduce you to: Serene Passage: A Traveller's Prayer at Ground Zero. In my curatorial statement for The Arta Gallery, 2011 (Distillery District, Toronto), I wrote:
“I first encountered Ground Zero at sunrise on a clear, winter morning. As I stood at the precipice of my floor to ceiling window, positioned 45 stories above ground level, I had the unnerving sensation of hovering in flight. My glass portal revealed, in the distance below, an expansive abyss in deep shadow and nascent light. Instinctively I began to make pictures.... I needed to fathom the chaos of form, texture, movement and emotion within Ground Zero’s sacred remnants and construction strata. With each frame and click of the shutter, I heard my heart whisper the Hebrew Traveller’s Prayer.”
Self-Portrait, Ground Zero. Tribeca NYC, 2009
